“He never played Little League Baseball”

Barack Obama, in his brief presidency, has maintained high approval ratings, somewhere in the 60s or 70s. That still leaves a lot of people who disapprove of the job he’s doing. No problem there — no president is going to have 100 percent approval, and it’s good for democracy to have an opposition ready to point out the shortcomings of those in power and to offer alternative solutions.

However, this blog post will focus not on the thoughtful dissenters, but on the batshit crazy brigade. They’ve brought youth sports into this, so it’s my duty as an American to point out their WTF-ness. Like how Obama is anti-American because “he never played Little League.”

The contention comes in an a recent interview by Pamela Geller, proprietor of the blog Atlas Shrugs, with Lt. Col. Allen West (Army, retired), an announced U.S. House candidate for Florida’s 22nd district (which had been in Republican hands for decades before incumbent Ron Klein won in 2006. West already lost to Klein in 2008).

Here is the video of the interview, with the youth sports portion coming at 3:31.

The money quote, from West: “You know what, I tell people, you know, [Obama] never played Little League Baseball.”

Geller (channeling Fonzie): “Heyyyyyyy!”

West: “There’s something about growing up playing Little League Baseball, church youth league sports, things of that nature, which are the fabric of this country. And he never did that.”

No wonder this had to be said at a free speech summit — MY GOD, WHY DIDN’T THE MEDIA TELL US OBAMA NEVER PLAYED LITTLE LEAGUE BASEBALL!!!!! HOW CAN WE HAVE A PRESIDENT WHO NEVER PLAYED LITTLE LEAGUE BASEBALL!!!!!!!!!

The tradition of presidents playing Little League Baseball is a long one. I mean, only one in the long tradition of presidents played Little League Baseball: George W. Bush.

However, if the point is that Obama doesn’t get America because he didn’t play sports as a kid, did West and Geller not get the memo about Obama playing high school basketball? Or what a friggin’ sports nut Obama is?

A few things to put West’s comments in context. Atlas Shrugs is a screeching jeremiad against jihads real and imagined, a site dedicated to letting us know the Muslims are going to kill us all, and they’ve been given the ammo now that a Muslim not born in America is in the White House. Atlas Shrugs trades in the fake-birth-certificate, secret-Muslim stuff even a lot of conservatives have dismissed. Would Obama have been more American if, like Eisenhower, he played semipro baseball under a fake name? West gained fame in conservative circles as a victim of American pussy injustice when in 2003 he was fined, but not court-martialed, for harsh interrogation techniques in Iraq.

The interview took place at something called the Free Speech Summit in Palm Beach, Fla., a gathering dedicated to denouncing the world pussy injustice of not having the right to shout “Fire! (At a Muslim!)” in a crowded theater. One of its keynoters was the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, whose greatest hits against Islam include calling it “the ideology of a retarded culture.”

Earlier in the Geller-West interview, both talk about how Obama can’t be American because he was fooling around “on the streets of Jakarta” (referring to the part of Obama’s childhood spent in Indonesia), and other, similar contentions to show that Obama is going to turn us into a Third-World Islamist state. The kicker is that by not having played Little League Baseball, Obama never learned to love America like those who did.

But why should we care? What does Obama’s youth sports experience mean for the stimulus package? If you have an argument with Obama, isn’t the issue with his policies, and not whether he ever wore a uniform sporting the phone number of a local hot dog stand?

So if parents already don’t feel forced to push their kids into organized sports, here’s one more reason: if you don’t, when your child becomes president, the future batshit crazy brigade is going to use it to disprove his or her’s fitness to lead the free world — if OBAMA HASN’T KILLED IT BY THEN!!!!!

By the way, in the interview West never mentions whether HE played Little League Baseball. I say, right now, release the transcripts! Show us the documentation! I want receipts from any youth league in which West participated! And I’m going to pore over it, because I won’t believe it’s from an AMERICAN league! And don’t just give me pictures — I’ve heard of Photoshop! Let’s release the documents, Lt. Col. West! Perhaps otherwise we’ll have to tell people that, you know, you never played Little League Baseball.